What’s in the Cards for Tech’s New Free Agents

By Guest Author

April 1st, 2011

This is a guest post from Dan Walsh, Account Executive in Racepoint Group’s Waltham office. Follow him on Twitter @DanWalshed.

Natali Morris’s announcement yesterday that she’ll be leaving CNET at the end of April was certainly surprising. Not so much because a popular reporter was leaving an influential news site but because that news site wasn’t Engadget.

In case you haven’t noticed, over the last two months the tech media landscape has seen some turnover… to quickly recap:

• February 18 – Senior Associate Editor Paul Miller leaves Engadget
• February 20 – Associate Editor Ross Miller leaves Engadget
• March 12 – Editor in Chief Joshua Topolsky leaves Engadget
• March 12 – Managing Editor Nilay Patel leaves Engadget
• March 28 – Reviews Editor Joanna Stern leaves Engadget
• March 30 – Senior Mobile Editor Chris Ziegler leaves Engadget
• March 30 – Host of CNET’s Loaded and The Early Show Tech Contributor Natali Morris leaves CNET

Perhaps even more surprising is that each of these reporters left their current gigs without a new (public) home in hand.

Personally I’d like to see them all wind up at GDGT.

For the unfamiliar, GDGT was founded by the formidable tag team of Peter Rojas and Ryan Block (of Gizmodo and Engadget fame) and is somewhere between social network and peer review platform.

It was really Natali’s departure that got me thinking about the possibility that GDGT could launch an editorial team. Currently most of the content on the news tab is linked from other sites. Imagine if they were to hire some of the recent free agents listed above.  A mix of professional and crowd-sourced reviews with the sharp commentary of any of the pundits above could quickly propel GDGT into direct competition with CNET and Engadget as the premier destination for consumer tech news and reviews.

With Josh leading the direction of the editorial (without the guiding hand of AOL) and Natali taking the reigns as the producer and creator of a GDGT show, the site would develop more of a mass appeal while remaining true to its roots. In short, it would be a force to be reckoned with.

GDGT 2.0 is already in the works. So how about that new editorial team?

Entry Filed under: Influencers,Mainstream Media